Hi Maureen,

On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 5:00 AM, Maureen wrote:

I've been getting the digest from this "user list" and I'm completely confused. I've also submitted a question but received no response.

I read in the latest Digest that this is a "mailing list", not a "message board". I don't understand the difference, and I don't understand how problems that are presented and answered are "mailing list" items as opposed to a "forum/message board" that addresses problems. Am I using the wrong service to obtain help in using Gimp? An explanation would be helpful, instead of just "dead air".

You are subscribed to the mailing list correctly. The only way there is of 'doing it wrongly' is using the forum interface provided, against developers wishes, by gimpusers.com.

The differences between a message board and a mailing list are many. The most important one, and the reason why the gimpusers forum interface is so broken, is that forums typically have 'flat' threading :
the first post is the 'parent' post, and all following posts on the subject are 'child' posts (so there is only one level of nesting);

Whereas mailing lists are just systems to relay emails to a list of people, and so they have all the normal, complete, infinitely-nestable threading capabilities inherent in email, which tends to make it much more clear who was replying to who.

This difference is mainly what has been causing the trouble (some emails not showing up on the gimpusers.com 'message board', confusion about who is quoting whom by users of the gimpusers.com 'message board').
In one instance, someone asked a question via gimpusers.com 'boards', could not see any of the 4 replies posted (by people who were actually genuinely subscribed to the mailing list), and later posted saying "Anyone?". I went to the trouble of signing up at gimpusers.com in order to tell him 'Stop that, and subscribe to the mailing list like an ordinary sane person!'.

Just to make it completely clear -- if your email address when posting to this list shows up as "YOURNAME ", you are accessing this list through the gimpusers forums. Otherwise, you are not doing so (and should therefore experience no strange behaviours arising from the message board software trying to pretend that gimp-user is a message board rather than a mailing list). For example, someone named 'Nyt' recently posted using the gimpusers forum interface, in the thread named 'shutdown'

I hope that helps,

David

Hi Maureen,

On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 5:00 AM, Maureen wrote:

I've been getting the digest from this "user list" and I'm completely confused. I've also submitted a question but received no response.

I read in the latest Digest that this is a "mailing list", not a "message board". I don't understand the difference, and I don't understand how problems that are presented and answered are "mailing list" items as

opposed

to a "forum/message board" that addresses problems. Am I using the wrong service to obtain help in using Gimp? An explanation would be helpful, instead of just "dead air".

You are subscribed to the mailing list correctly. The only way there is of 'doing it wrongly' is using the forum interface provided, against developers wishes, by gimpusers.com.

The differences between a message board and a mailing list are many. The most important one, and the reason why the gimpusers forum interface is so broken, is that forums typically have 'flat' threading :
the first post is the 'parent' post, and all following posts on the subject are 'child' posts (so there is only one level of nesting);

Whereas mailing lists are just systems to relay emails to a list of people, and so they have all the normal, complete, infinitely-nestable threading capabilities inherent in email, which tends to make it much more clear who was replying to who.

This difference is mainly what has been causing the trouble (some emails not showing up on the gimpusers.com 'message board', confusion about who is quoting whom by users of the gimpusers.com 'message board').
In one instance, someone asked a question via gimpusers.com 'boards', could not see any of the 4 replies posted (by people who were actually genuinely subscribed to the mailing list), and later posted saying "Anyone?". I went to the trouble of signing up at gimpusers.com in order to tell him 'Stop that, and subscribe to the mailing list like an ordinary sane person!'.

Just to make it completely clear -- if your email address when posting to this list shows up as "YOURNAME ", you are accessing this list through the gimpusers forums. Otherwise, you are not doing so (and should therefore experience no strange behaviours arising from the message board software trying to pretend that gimp-user is a message board rather than a mailing list). For example, someone named 'Nyt' recently posted using the gimpusers forum interface, in the thread named 'shutdown'

I hope that helps,

David

Now, I'm confused. Should I not be posting by signing on to the forum and typing responses? I have to type in the two word display to "prevent automatic spam postings". So, am I going about it wrongly?

What should I be doing?

Caruso

< snip >

I hope that helps,

May I take this opportunity to add another thing. When replying to an item always use 'Reply to list' or the equivalent and not 'Reply to all'. Because I have my client set to sort into various mail boxes and no doubt others also do, 'Replies to list' pops the mail into my GIMP box whereas 'Reply to all' pops the reply into my personal box. I know the reply also appears on the list but my response does not.

Norman

On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Carusoswi wrote:

Now, I'm confused.  Should I not be posting by signing on to the forum and typing responses?

You should only be using the bogus 'forum' interface on gimpusers.com if you want to annoy and confuse some of the other people using this mailing list (which is what it is, not a forum! The fact you are almost certainly seeing this message through the 'forum' doesn't mean anything to the contrary! The 'forum' is simply a piece of software which presents this mailing list as if it were truly a forum.)

 I have to type in the two word display to "prevent automatic spam postings".
 So, am I going about it wrongly?

Yes. If you want to be respectful of the people posting here, to this mailing list (gimp-user@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu) , then please stop using the 'forum' interface on gimpusers.com and instead, genuinely subscribe to this mailing list.

See http://www.gimp.org/mail_lists.html for details of how to subscribe to any of the GIMP related mailing lists.

David

On Sun, 5 Apr 2009 16:32:25 +0930, David Gowers wrote:

Yes. If you want to be respectful of the people posting here, to this mailing list (gimp-user@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu) , then please stop using the 'forum' interface on gimpusers.com and instead, genuinely subscribe to this mailing list.

If so, then what is the purpose of the "forum" ? Who has interest that some people can (tehnically) be non-respectful of the people posting here ? (why is not the "forum" simply erased then ?)

(I don't know the forum address or where it lies, I only comment the idea)

Cristi

On Sun, 05 Apr 2009 07:40:45 +0100, norman wrote:

May I take this opportunity to add another thing. When replying to an item always use 'Reply to list' or the equivalent and not 'Reply to all'.

All the GIMP mailing lists have a configuration problem, in that when I reply to a message it goes to the sender and not to the list. After a while when I waiting for my message to appear and obviously it does not, I remember "ough, this is the GIMP list, damn", so I have to redirect the message with the address manually entered.

The GIMP lists are the only ones from those where I am subscribed (~15) that behaves in this way.
Perhaps because the Sender address includes something with "bounces" and not actually the list address ? I don't know, but it is annoying and annoys the receiver when I first relplay to him and then again to the list.

Cristi

On Sunday, April 5, 2009, 10:59:12, Cristian Secar? wrote:

Perhaps because the Sender address includes something with "bounces" and not actually the list address ?

It's simply the way these lists are set up (there's a configuration option in Mailman for this, and for some strange reason it's not enabled). Luckily, my mailer lets me define a per-folder template, and I have it set up to always reply to list (because otherwise I'd never remember to do this myself).

< snip >

The GIMP lists are the only ones from those where I am subscribed (~15) that behaves in this way.
Perhaps because the Sender address includes something with "bounces" and not actually the list address ? I don't know, but it is annoying and annoys the receiver when I first relplay to him and then again to the list.

I never have any problem with those who reply to list. I have the same with other Ubuntu lists, replies to list - no problem, replies to all - comes directly into my personal mail box because the reply to all puts my address first.

Norman

< snip >

I hope that helps,

May I take this opportunity to add another thing. When replying to an item always use 'Reply to list' or the equivalent and not 'Reply to all'. Because I have my client set to sort into various mail boxes and no doubt others also do, 'Replies to list' pops the mail into my GIMP box whereas 'Reply to all' pops the reply into my personal box. I know the reply also appears on the list but my response does not.

Norman

If someone will explain to me how to subscribe here, I will do my best to answer using the proper method. I discovered this forum during a search on Gimp. My mail client is gmail.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Caruso

2009/4/5 Cristian Secar? :

On Sun, 5 Apr 2009 16:32:25 +0930, David Gowers wrote:

Yes. If you want to be respectful of the people posting here, to this mailing list (gimp-user@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu) , then please stop using the 'forum' interface on gimpusers.com and instead, genuinely subscribe to this mailing list.

If so, then what is the purpose of the "forum" ? Who has interest that some people can (tehnically) be non-respectful of the people posting here ? (why is not the "forum" simply erased then ?)

You seem to have the idea that the forum was created by some of the same people who maintain this mailing list. This is very far from the truth -- Some random person, who has hardly posted at all on this mailing list, just said one day "I've set up forums on gimpusers.com that provide an interface to the GIMP mailing lists, hope you like, tell me what you think".
A few of the core GIMP developers objected quite strongly, and later indicated that the best thing would be to take it down altogether. Their objections were ignored.

The purpose of the forum, I cannot directly comment on; although I'd guess that it aimed to make posting easier. It achieved that, at the cost of the confusion and inconvenience of both the forum users and the people genuinely subscribed to this mailing list. If anyone only wanted to read the gimp-user mailing list, the GMANE archives would be perfectly adequate (with the advantage that they represent the emails as.. emails rather than forum threads/posts ; proper threading et al)

One problem that I haven't even mentioned yet is people thinking the mailing list is a message board. This might seem unproblematic, but there are significant difference in etiquette between message boards and mailing lists, and the functional differences between the gimpusers.com forums and this mailing list have already caused problems in this area.

Overall, the forum simply causes more problems than it solves.

Whose interest it is in (this is not a technical issue, this is a matter of misrepresentation and confusion effecting readers and posters accessing this list both in the approved way and through the forums) -- I hope that is evident from earlier parts of this email.

Re: the reply-to issue: I have to agree, this has occasionally bit me. OTOH, what exactly do you expect your mailer to do when you choose 'reply' rather than 'reply to all'? It seems to me sensible that 'reply' should reply to the original author, rather than all people who saw the mail -- that's what 'reply to all' is for, right? If this distinction does not exist for many of the mailing lists you subscribe to, I have to say that this is an inconsistency in the opposite direction.

David

On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 7:49 PM, Carusoswi wrote:

If someone will explain to me how to subscribe here, I will do my best to answer using the proper method.  I discovered this forum during a search on Gimp.  My mail client is gmail.

So is mine :) So I expect you should have no trouble with this:

1. Go to the url I previously provided, http://www.gimp.org/mail_lists.html 2. Click on 'Gimp-user'
3. Fill out the 'Subscribing' part of the form, then click on the 'Subscribe' button
(Note -- your email address is the only part of the form that is strictly required)
4. You will be emailed to confirm your subscription. Follow the instructions given.
5. That's all.

Hope that helps.

David

On Sun, 5 Apr 2009 19:51:55 +0930, David Gowers wrote:

Re: the reply-to issue:
[...] OTOH, what exactly do you expect your mailer to do when you choose 'reply' rather than 'reply to all'?

I am expecting to reply to the Reply-To: field, if existing. If not, to the From: field.

The GIMP mailing lists misses the Reply-To: field, causing a lot of annoyances and sometimes delays (delays when realising after several hours that my message was sent wrongly to the author instead to the mailing list).

For a mailing lists (generally), for me the "Reply to All" is only useful if for some reason I want to reply off-list to the sender, in which case I copy-paste-delete some recipient fields in order to particularize the destination. But this is the exception, not the rule.

Long time ago I used a very good mailer program for its time, PMMail, which had a very useful feature: a popup message was triggered in case the From: and Reply-To: was different, asking me to whom I want to actually reply. Unfortunately that program is now dead (and the latest versions lacks UTF-8 encoding as well as threading based on Message-ID).

Cristi